The Houses That Built Me
We shape our buildings, and afterwards, our buildings shape us.
- Winston Churchill
It’s called the American Dream, because you’d have to be asleep to believe it.
- George Carlin
You can get a sense of people almost instantly as you walk into their home. Some have a cozy bright feeling. Others are dark and broody, and others are old and quirky. Then there are those that are bright but cold. Others are dark but warm.
Some have soft couches, others have hard decorative ones. Some have scuffed up floors and dog hair, others are pristine and intimidating. Some are centered around a tv. Others around the kitchen. Others, the hearth and bookshelves.
Some have hidden rooms. Some are open layouts.
All have stories and memories hanging on the walls. They are little museums of someone’s life.
I’ve spent a majority of the past 8 years house-sitting so the concept of space has always been a theme for my art and musings. It’s no secret that our environment shapes us, but it’s easy to forget. Especially because we become blind to so much of our everyday surroundings.
It’s truly fascinating how differently I live at each house. It’s equally interesting what habits stay the same or change. What’s consistent, what’s different. Each home formed me in some way. I have such vivid memories associated with each space. Good and bad but all full of growth. I saw so many different neighborhoods of Seattle and was able to explore new places to play and eat. I had a life there all my own. Me and my animal friends.
We build our homes, but our homes build us too.
That’s why current housing trends and city planning trouble me so much. Smaller and smaller spaces with fewer amenities tend to be the norm in most cities. And even those are quickly becoming unaffordable to anyone making less than $100,000 a year.
I suppose I always took home ownership for granted. I never thought it would be easy, I just figured it would be possible. My parents were immigrants with the typical immigrant story. They had nothing but were able to work blue collar jobs long and smart enough to save up for a house. They worked so hard. I don’t discount that. But our house back then was $140,000. Its current market rate is nearly $700,000. It would have been even more if we hadn’t sold off some of the property to developers a decade ago.
And wages, even for college grads, really haven’t risen that much.
But gas and groceries sure have.
My childhood home, my parent’s house, the place where I still have a bedroom available whenever I need it, is glorious. It’s one of the most peaceful places on Earth to me. It allowed a safe place for our weary and broken family to heal. I love it. But I always thought I’d spread my wings and be able to create a space of my own one day. I used to think I’d have to work really hard, but it would be possible to own my own house.
It doesn’t always feel attainable these days. Not even to rent, not at current prices.
It seems there are those who have forgotten how much of a human right and necessity good housing is. Not just housing, but good housing. Something with life and rhythm. Something with dignity.
In their article linked below, Jacoba Urist of the Atlantic, claims, “Beyond the economic impact of smaller spaces, our homes also serve an important role in communicating our values and goals, or what scientists call “identity claims.” We tend to feel happier and healthier when we can bring others to our space to telegraph who we are and what’s important to us.”
Urist continues with, “I’ve studied children in crowded apartments and low-income housing a lot, and they can end up becoming withdrawn, and have trouble studying and concentrating. In these situations, modern amenities—such as floor to ceiling windows, extra storage and a communal roof deck— won’t compensate for a fundamental lack of privacy in a child’s home every day.”
Forget children and humans, rats, rabbits, and dogs will not develop proper cognitive abilities if kept in small enclosed spaces without engagement and freedom to move about in a stimulating environment.
Humans are the first animal we domesticated. Agriculture and a surplus of food allowed us to set up small civilizations, switching from our largely nomadic and hunter gatherer way of life. We were born to wander. Settlement has been but a blink in the cosmic calendar for humans. We used to be constantly on the move. And there used to be a lot fewer people too.
But even when cities started springing up - after we sorted out the plumbing and some of the disease aspects of living in close proximity to each other and animals - the cities were some what art in their own right. They had a flow and rhythm that melded with nature and allowed easy walkable access to everything we needed. Including ample leisure time in the town piazzas and common areas. I’m thinking Italy and much of Europe. I could walk Rome in a day. I’d be tired but I’ve done it. Granted I was 21 at the time and much more vigorous. I’m sure my 30 year old haggard body could still make the journey.
And as I walk, even with the modern changes, the city still feels so accessible and walkable. And everyone is walking. Showing off their clothes and meeting up for gelato or wine. There’s community everywhere. And it’s a much slower pace of life.
And the apartments are so open and flowy. Even the basic ones are decorative and regal.
They don’t feel cheap or cramped.
Even the more expensive apartments I’ve toured in Seattle don’t feel like that.
And things really aren’t built to last in this country. Our bridges are falling down while Rome’s still last. Businesses that cut corners, landlords that don’t maintain their responsibilities. It’s all so common.
And so enraging.
I just wish we could see what the world would be like if we were all given the right and opportunity to maintain a healthy life. Healthy enough to achieve our potential. All of us. Can you imagine what it would be like if we took care of each other?
Not even the fancy stuff, just the basics, but made them art?
It would be something else, my friend.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/the-health-risks-of-small-apartments/282150/
“This house is a hotel, I won’t stay long.” - The Wind & The Wave
You’re not listening.
It’s rare to find people that make you feel “seen”. People who make you feel safe, understood, & appreciated. In their company, we feel as if there is no such thing as distance. No space at all between the stars.
Just like bats can “see” with their ears, I think good listeners create a type of sonar image of whoever they’re listening to - more tangible than our eyes could ever see alone.
The art of listening has been in decline. Whether the cause is social media stunting attention spans, hectic work schedules or our biological inability to process the size and breadth of our global tribe, we are headed for severe consequences. Our society is polarized and on the brink of massive breakdowns. I feel like we keep waiting for someone to save us. Some big dramatic turn around.
I remember leadership being an elective in high school. It wasn’t part of the regular school day. You had to get a ride because the bus wouldn’t get you there early enough and many of the kids encouraged to join were already in ASB or top achievers or extroverted popular kids that certain teachers had favored. They were the ones that talked the loudest and most often. This made it pretty hard for all of us low income kids, who relied on buses, needed our sleep, or simply were quiet, to participate in leadership activities. I never understood why leadership wasn’t a required course and easily accessible.
This was most likely because schools have a hard time funding electives. Which is bullshit in itself, but Americans also seem to think leadership is a God given endowment to the select special few. Charisma is a blessing. The rest of you are sheep just waiting for your shepherd.
Fuck off.
I happen to believe that leadership and charisma are things that can be learned and curated and that leaders come in all sorts of varieties. Not just the big talkers.
Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison for opposing apartheid. Yet, one of his first moves as president of the post-apartheid South Africa was not to punish his predecessors, but to establish a Reconciliation Commission to keep the peace. Reconciliation can’t happen without forgiveness. Forgiveness can’t happen without empathy or understanding. Empathy can’t happen without listening.
It is often said that Mandela held his meetings with everyone sitting in a circle so that each person could be easily seen & heard. He was frequently the last to speak so that he could open the floor for others. He led a fractured nation to more equality & prosperity in his self imposed one term as president in the 90s. He is still revered as one of the greatest leaders in history.
We tend to remember & rate our leaders on their rhetoric & bombastic speeches. I would argue that, despite being a great orator, Mandela was a great leader because he was a good listener.
Mandela himself once said in an interview when asked about leadership, “it’s not a question of a leader, it’s a question of a human being who does something to make an ordinary individual to feel ‘I am a human being.’”
Basically this says to me, leadership is bringing out the humanity in others. In each other. It’s the seemingly ordinary, even mundane, small things.
Most people will not comprehend just how arduous a task it is to listen well, or how powerful and necessary this skill is. For maintaining friendships, fostering business, or even a democracy, listening is not a luxury.
It’s what we owe one another.
As Kate Murphy highlights in her book You’re Not Listening, FBI hostage negotiators emphasize that much of their task is actually just to make people feel understood and listened to. If you don’t, negotiations dissolve & they stop listening to you too. Even children & animals are deeply upset when not heard. It not only fractures their trust, but stunts their development.
When you have everyone turning a deaf ear to each other, what you breed is loneliness, disease, hate & violence.
I found startling connections to Murphy’s book in Anne Applebaum’s Atlantic article on Hanna Arendt’s The Rise of Totalitarianism. Arendt hypothesized that the main precursor to totalitarianism is loneliness and disconnection.
Reading both of these texts really drove home how crucial a skill listening is. Below I will go over Murphy and Applebaum’s insights and how considering their warnings and tips could help improve your relationships and maybe even our country. Be the leader you wished you had. Start by listening.
Kate Murphy is a reporter for the New York Times so she spends a great deal of time listening to people. Some of whom she admires and respects, others, she despises. Yet, to get their stories without them shutting down on her, she has to put her feelings aside and offer all of her subjects a certain amount of human consideration. She has to be curious about them without immediately passing judgment. Something John Keats called “negative capability”.
She found some startling science on listening. Apparently, when we listen well, the speaker’s and listener’s brain activities sync up. We literally are on the same brain wave. It’s nearly impossible to not feel a bit of empathy grow when you truly listen and when the speaker feels truly heard. This is what storytelling and journalism is based on. Feeling each other’s truths.
Murphy’s book is full of fun facts and useful advice. Here is a breakdown of good and bad listening habits.
These are of course starting points. If you want more examples and instructions - check out Murphy’s book. And research the topic for yourself! I’d love to hear what you find.
I will also press that you should offer yourself some of these kindnesses. Journal and listen to yourself. Be open with your own thoughts and feelings and ask yourself kind open questions. Don’t judge and label yourself too harshly and too soon. You may just not be listening to what you really want or need.
You are the vessel through which you filter the outer world. If you can’t see your own truths, you can’t accept anyone else’s and that doesn’t do anybody any good. We engage the same parts of our brain when we talk to ourselves as when we talk to others. So consider yourself worthy. Witness yourself. Maybe then you’ll stop asking for permission to lead. Maybe then you’ll just do it.
One last reminder - be extra attentive to the people closest to you. Most of us are much more likely to assume we already know our best friends and spouses and siblings so we stop really listening to them. Just because you’ve known someone for a certain number of years, doesn’t mean you can sum them up. People change and evolve. You may be shocked by how much you don’t know once you start really listening.
Why am I so obsessed with getting better at listening? Because we are at war again and things seem to keep getting worse.
Anne Applebaum in one of her latest articles has this to say about Arendt’s work on totalitarianism:
“The questions Arendt asks remain absolutely relevant today. She was fascinated by the passivity of so many people in the face of dictatorship, by the widespread willingness, even eagerness, to believe lies and propaganda—just consider the majority of Russian people today, unaware that there is even a war going on next door and prevented by law from calling it such. In the totalitarian world, trust has dissolved. The masses “believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true.” To explain this phenomenon, Arendt zeroes in on human psychology, especially the intersection between terror and loneliness.”
Arendt says, “Terror can rule absolutely only over men who are isolated against each other … Isolation may be the beginning of terror; it certainly is its most fertile ground; it always is its result.”
Arendt’s four main predictors of totalitarian regimes or ones that used terror to control and subvert everyone in society (not just their enemies) are:
Divided society in which individuals are isolated from each other - emotionally and in trust - not necessarily physically.
A strong man unifies through fear and propaganda.
Natural rights and individual sovereignty are eroded. Humans (mostly women and people of color) are seen as nothing more than animals. Acts of atrocity against them don’t seem as weighty. (Think abortion rights. Think George Floyd.)
The banality of evil - enough thoughtless individuals who are not necessarily evil, but carry out evil like it’s normal. Think mass shootings. Think cops who take their authority too far. Think how common it all feels.
I don’t want this to continue. And I don’t want to wait for some grand solution. I want to start with what I have control over. Yes, political action is necessary, but the private is political. What I choose to do or not do in a free society has weight.
I learned the power of “radical listening” from Deeyah Khan, a documentary film maker who studied jihadis and the American White Power movements. She engaged many people she strongly disagreed with but when she saw their humanity, they were willing to see hers. I highly highly recommend her documentaries. They are available on YouTube. Just search her name. I’ll try and have a proper blog post about her and her work soon. Because I want to be like her.
I choose to do the small, unglamorous everyday tasks that feel impossible sometimes. I choose to acknowledge humanity even when mine is being threatened. Even when anger surges through me and I want to deny it.
Some days I wish horrific doom on people who don’t seem to get it. But that seems counter productive too. I’m choosing to live for curiosity and for play.
Hopefully enough people doing the same will account for something.
Here’s to trying!
Bomb Baby: Sugar Scrubs
Turmeric Scrub
When I first encountered sugar scrubs, I couldn’t understand why everyone was rubbing sugar on their body instead of putting it into chocolate chip cookies with a lot of browned butter and pecans. It seemed like a waste.
However, the more I looked into them, the more I wanted to experiment with them myself. Here are a few things that sold me on sugar scrubs and why they are not as silly as I first thought.
Sugar is a natural humectant that draws moisture from the atmosphere and will help your skin retain its moisture. Especially when partnered with glycerin.
It gently removes build up of dry/dead tissue which allows for generation of new healthier cells. This will leave your skin soft, smooth and radiant.
The removal of the top layer of dead/old skin will allow your moisturizers and creams/balms to penetrate deeper into your skin so you can reap the most of their benefits.
Sugar is less abrasive than sand or salts and not synthetic like exfoliating beads so will not impact the environment and dissolves easily making for a quick easy clean up.
Use: Some are just simply sugar and oils, but some sugar scrubs have a few extra treats like glycerin, and emulsifiers that will allow you to comfortably apply and use in the shower without clumpiness and easy spreadability. They even lather a bit and really allow you to rub away dry skin. It’s excellent for post shave treatments - it will leave your legs and body silky smooth.
It’s a bit rough to use on the face. If you do, be very gentle. I like using it on the face, but am very careful to not over do it.
It’ll work well on the lips too - especially in the winter. Again, be gentle. You don’t want to tear your skin.
Coffee Sugar Scrub - smells incredible
Bomb Baby Body Scrub Recipe
Sugar
Apricot Kernel Oil
Safflower Oil
Glycerin
Stearic Acid
Emulsifying Wax
Turmeric* - only in some
Poppy Seeds* - only in some
Coffee* - only in some
Optiphen
Why I use what I use:
Turmeric is great for reducing inflammation and puffiness. It really brings out a freshness to my skin that I can feel and see. The scrub reduces dryness and irritation post shave. Coffee really energizes the circulation.
The oils are non-comedogenic so won’t clog your pores and are full of nutrients. Apricot Kernel Oil is a bit comedogenic but only a small amount is used here for the lightness and nutrients it provides.
Stearic acid helps harden and thicken the product for an easier application. The emulsifying wax helps it cling to the oils and water on your skin for easier application and greater effectiveness in washing away oils and dead skin post rinse.
Optiphen is an antifungal/antimicrobial. Helps keep things fresh incase you get water into the mix during the shower.
I hope you try one out just for fun - my skin loves them and it makes taking showers even more fun and fragrant.
Bye for now and may good things come your way!
Love,
Gia
Body Butters
What are they and why use them?
Bomb Baby Emulsified Kokum Butter
Butter is quite possibly my favorite food. But why stop at eating it when you can rub it all over ya self and soak in the deliciousness all day long?
A body butter is exactly what it sounds like - a butter for your body.
It’s a concoction made up of lipids, this can be liquid or solid fats, that are whipped and used for conditioning and hydration and repair of skin. Most often a butter, like shea, mango or cocoa butter is used with a carrier oil like rose hip seed, apricot kernel or coconut oil to create the desired nutrition and consistency.
What’s cool about my recipe?
My favorite formula that I created myself is one that is largely kokum butter - a dry hard butter from India - mixed with kerite shea butter - a soft creamy butter from Senegal. I mix with safflower and apricot kernel oils and stearic acid, fragrance and arrowroot powder.
Kokum is non-comedogenic and is hard and dry - it doesn’t melt at room temp so this provides stability to the butter. Since it’s dry - it’s less greasy. This recipe is light and fluffy and absorbs super quickly into the skin and won’t clog pores. A little goes a long way and my skin loves it. Kokum has a very unique texture and I highly recommend trying it at least once.
Safflower oil is a great carrier oil too since it’s also non-comedogenic and light and absorbs quickly. It’s great for people with acne or sensitive skin.
I know many people freak out when they see the word acid in anything so I wanted to clear up that stearic acid is naturally present in most butters. It’s a fatty acid that is a thickener and hardener when used independently. It really fluffs up the recipe and allows me to reduce the percentage of oils so that the recipe can have a rich feel without the grease or density.
This is my favorite recipe to date. I’m working on an emulsified butter that will have a lighter lotion/cream like texture so I will report back on that once I try it for myself. Most butters are anhydrous - meaning there’s no water - however the emulsified one has a wax that binds oil and water together. This means a less heavy butter that is almost lotion-like in texture.
Until then, kokum butter whip remains the champ.Maybe even long after as I am perfectly okay with a little heaviness in my butters.
Bomb Baby Body Butter Recipe
Kokum Butter
Kerite Shea Butter
Safflower Oil
Apricot Kernel Oil
Stearic Acid
Arrowroot Powder
Fragrance Oil
They are so creamy and fluffy and such a luxurious feel on the skin. Treat your skin right and look and feel your best. Because when you feel better, you do better. And the world needs you at your best right now.
Bye for now. May good things come your way!
Love,
Gia
Successful Habit Creation
Small steps to big results
A brief over view of Atomic Habits by James Clear
James Clear specializes in decision making, habit creation and lasting behavior change. I’ve employed a few of his techniques from his book and have found them very useful in creating new routines for myself both personally and professionally.
Clear has 4 Laws of Behavior Change.
The action must be:
Obvious - Have daily cues that are clear and consistent
Easy - Starting the activity should have little complications
Attractive - Make it fun
Satisfying - What is the true goal/reward for the activity?
Routines are hard to create/change. If even one of these is missing, the new habit won’t stick.
My new habit goal: I wanted my exercise routine to become more consistent.
My obvious cue became coming home and putting my coat away. I hang a fitness band in my closet. When I put my coat away my work out shorts and fitness band are already right in front of me. I then pick them up and walk into the space I have set up for activities in my house.This is an example of what Clear calls Stacking a habit. You use the momentum of one activity into starting the next. I use the momentum of putting away my coat to start my work out.
I’ve made it easy to start since my fitness band is easily accessible. I also started small. Clear mentions you should have a Starting Ritual that is 2 minutes or less. My goal was to start with some stretches and a few pushups. My work outs were only a few minutes long, but it built the habit. Once I started and got warmed up, it was easier to keep going.
As for making it fun, I make sure I have playlists to listen to while I work out. Music helps motivate me and keeps me from getting too bored. If I don’t feel like listening to music, I often will listen to a podcast, the news, or watch a Netflix show while I work out. This is an example of Clear’s strategy to Sync activities. Pair a less fun activity with a more fun one to build it up.
I find my exercise routine to be intrinsically motivating because I want to be healthier. It boosts my mood and helps me sleep. This helps with the satisfaction part of it. It’s good to know why you are wanting to change or create a habit. I like knowing the benefits.
Clear also mentions that you should Keep Score of your habits. This can be done on paper, a calendar, an app. Just make sure to track progress so you can measure it. I measure my progress by recording how many repetitions of a certain work out I can do in one session. I also watch tutorial videos on how to do certain exercises better. Watching others triggers mirror neurons and makes starting an exercise even easier. Enhancing my technique is also satisfying.
Finishing a work out is then my cue to go shower and do my skin care routine. It all flows.
I use these techniques almost unconsciously, especially stacking, to create new behaviors when needed. I’ve employed these stacking strategies to work as well.
Let me know in the comment section or email if you end up employing these techniques or improving upon them. I’d love to know what you think.
Good luck and may good things come your way!
Love,
Gia
Sikhing Discomfort
In the mornings and evenings, Mom used to play Sikh hymns on the stereo. The solemn chanting reverberated throughout every corner of the house as incense smoke curled its way around the ceiling. Nowhere was beyond their reach. I knew the hymns were important, that they were trying to tell me something essential. If only I could decipher the code. Most of the hymns are in Gurmukhi, a mix of Sanskrit, Urdu, Punjabi and Hindi. And it’s written in verse so it can be damn near inscrutable at times. However, every now and then, I’d come across something that my mind wanted to chew over and over.
This stanza always stuck out to me.
Dukh daru
Sukh rog pehya
Pain is medicine
Ease becomes disease
It’s not glorifying suffering. It’s simply saying, healing and growth come with discomfort.
Your muscles have to rip before they grow and get stronger.
And if they are comfortable for too long, they atrophy.
In her book, Dopamine Nation, Anna Lembke, an addiction psychiatrist at Stanford, lays out the psychological & neurological reasons pain can be useful.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps motivate us. A reward chemical.
Our brains have a dopamine baseline. This is our neutral. If we are above this baseline and we are getting a surge of dopamine, we are happy and motivated. If we dip below this baseline and are running low on dopamine, we are depressed and unmotivated.
But dopamine is a finite resource. Seeking pleasure often leads to a dopamine crash after a high and leaves us in much pain.
I think this explains why so many wealthy industrialized nations find themselves with high levels of depression and suicide rates despite having so much pleasure and material goods, just a click away. (There are other more severe mental illnesses that need medical assistance for people to escape them so this does not apply to every situation. Not everyone’s brain works the same.)
Lembke’s suggestions for dealing with this problem are quite extensive and thorough, but the gist is: to avoid real pain, we must pursue discomfort or abstain from pleasure in concentrated doses.
It sounded like a cosmic bitch slap to me too, but once I began to put the theories to the test,
I realized I could actually feel sustainable pleasure and satisfaction from pursuing discomfort and not have a depressive hangover after. So I put a stop to pure comfort seeking for a while.
Lembke mentioned exercise, fasting, and ice baths as ways you can pursue moderated discomfort and help balance your dopamine levels.
Exercise showed a 100-200% increase in dopamine levels that didn’t crash out quickly. It was a more long lasting dopamine high and had a gradual leveling off that doesn’t leave you reeling from a crash.
I make it a point to exercise every day now even if it’s for 15-20 minutes. I put on music and start slow and with good breathing. It leaves me feeling accomplished on top of the endorphins and dopamine boost. It’s also fun to live in your body. I’m usually so stuck in my head that spending time intentionally moving and pushing my body makes me appreciate it and all it is capable of even more.
Fasting is also a great way to moderately increase your discomfort and boost dopamine. I try to go at least 16 hours between my last evening meal and my first meal of the next day. I’ve even done a 28 hour fast and found the effects startling. I was not lethargic or low energy or even grumpy. Running on ketones (energy source after glucose runs out) is much more sustainable and enjoyable.
Staying hungry for a few extra hours can be such a gift to your body and mind as it allows it to go into a stage of autophagy (self eating). Your body starts to break down old cells to make way for new ones. This can significantly reduce inflammation in the body as well which is a major source of pain and discomfort and cause of disease. Fasting also boosts HGH (Human Growth Hormone - naturally occurring) in the body and encourages healing and regeneration in cells.
There’s a reason so many religions have fasting built into them from Lent to Ramadan. It’s good for you. We weren’t designed to constantly be digesting. It takes time and energy away from other biological processes. And when I go long periods of time without eating, I tend to enjoy the simple foods so much more that I may not even crave anything extravagant. It resets my palette and makes me grateful. And gratitude itself is a mood enhancer.
As for the ice baths, I was more hesitant to start those because I hate being cold.
Then I discovered Yes Theory and The “Ice Man” Wim Hoff.
Yes Theory is a group of friends and YouTubers who put themselves in uncomfortable situations to see if they can figure their way out. Sometimes they travel to a new country and try to find their way around without a map or try to make their way home without money.
They operate on the belief that most people are good and want to help you. And that seeking discomfort brings growth and joy. I’ll link to their channel down below.
They teamed up with Wim Hoff to make a documentary about how Hoff defies belief by climbing frozen mountains barefoot and in shorts. He has set all sorts of records of pushing physical and mental boundaries. He can sit fully submerged in ice for 2 hours without his core body temperature changing.
Hoff has an identical twin who never trained like he did and the twin lacks such abilities. He has trained many others to be able to push the same limits he does. So he’s not just a genetic anomaly. He’s just made a habit of doing uncomfortable things regularly.
I watched that documentary ready to be skeptical but slowly started changing my mind as I watched what unfolded. It’s available on YouTube and I encourage you to check it out because it’s a joyful foray into the possibilities and strength of the human body and mind.
I started employing the Wim Hoff breathing technique daily and felt immediate results. The breathing helps alkalize the blood and allows you to get a jolt of adrenaline that reduces pain and increases focus. It also increases blood flow all around the body - this delivers more nutrients and power to the muscles and other essential organs.
The breath work also allows you to endure a cold shower a bit easier.
The cold showers are a test of mental strength for sure but have proven to raise dopamine levels similar to exercise. I’ve even sat in a cold lake for 7 minutes and sat in the snow in just a t-shirt and shorts to test my limits and it’s been super fun to see my progress.
I’m encouraged by the results. I sleep better and feel better. I don’t succumb to depression nearly as often or as deeply as I did only a year or so ago. (Despite the world having gotten seemingly worse).
I’m also more primed to pursue other discomforts, like changing jobs and learning new things or forming new relationships. Getting the brain and body accustomed to small amounts of discomfort makes you more resilient in all aspects of life.
I attribute a lot of this to habit creation and consistency. The compounding effect is powerful and not just applicable to money. I’m excited to see how my mind and body will feel in 6 months to a year!
I know habit creation is not easy. Atomic Habits by James Clear is an excellent resource on how to successfully create new habits/routines and change behaviors. We are routine and comfort loving creatures. New habits, especially uncomfortable ones are likely to meet much resistance. It’s okay. It takes time but it also takes systems and planning. Read my blog on habit creation to learn how to better employ it to your life.
Let me know if you end up pursuing any of the above mentioned techniques, or any of your own, in the pursuit of seeking discomfort. I’d love to hear your stories.
Bye for now. May good things come your way.
Love,
Gia
Letter to the Editor of the Everett Herald
Chances are you haven’t heard of Samuel Pierpont Langley, but you likely know the Wright Brothers. Both attempted manned flight. Langley had prestige, degrees and money. The Wright Brothers had each other, an unshakeable conviction in discovery, innovation and human potential. Langley quit when he faced multiple failures. He wanted to win. They wanted to be better. The right set of values can take humankind to new heights. The wrong set can make sure you never leave the ground.
Our democracy isn’t measuring up to the values that let us innovate. Money speaks loudly and election structures have trapped voters into choosing “the lesser of two evils” in fear of “throwing away” their votes on fresh voices. Implementing ranked-choice voting is the first step in removing these impediments to stable and fair elections.
RCV paves the way for innovation by freeing voters to choose who they truly believe in and guarantees a true majority win with a clear mandate for candidates. That’s power to the people.
Stand up for your values. Vote for ranked-choice voting. Get your elected officials to do the same. Let’s rebuild and get our democracy back in the air. Not for profit, but for what’s possible
Appeared in the Everett Herald January 17, 2021
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/ranked-choice-voting-would-provide-stable-fair-elections/?fbclid=IwAR3mrlNdb4KZjZmjXa_SjK17d6nCSzSy-mbkMgbtGi4J1NoZU6E2jINBS8U
Releasing the Day
By: Gia Kaur (in print in Bricolage 2014)
I sent the lure’s feathery feelers reeling
up and away to go rest in the last ripples
of sunlight. I can’t quite convince myself
to carpe some other diem
and to release this day.
I want to jump
into the sun-drenched lake and color myself
in its borrowed amber light, because moments
are like fish: when you hook a good one,
you can’t help but hold on tight.
But these ancient photons
were never really mine.
They took eons to get here
only to disappear,
and even the ones that seeped
into my skin will soon etherize.
Still, I want:
To dye my hair vermillion
with the embers of the setting sun
as it powders the cotton-ball sky with blush.
To dip my feet into the silent lake and hear
the wind start to make the bulrushes sway
and sing as the evening hush is obliterated
by a chorus of toads, and insects taking wing.
To sit in my boat and learn
to take in all the nighttime
creatures doing nighttime things.
Commencement Address to the Class of 2020
“Love doesn’t know what distance is.” Hunter Hayes
May 3, 2020
“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.”
“The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.”
“Truly to sing, that is a different breath.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke
You know I was actually trying to come up with an excuse to get out of my 10 year high school reunion this year. Looks like the universe took care of that one for me.
Being an introvert, I’ve been practicing social distancing my whole life. It’s not that I hate people, I’ll deny it in public, but I kind of love them. No other species makes as glorious of a mess as we do. We make music, we make art, we make chocolate ice-cream. We also make war and pollution and Michael Bay movies. It’s awesome and it’s terrible. It’s life. It’s humanity. And that’s fine, I just need a lot of time in my fortress of solitude to make sense of my life and to feel real and safe and to create. To hear myself breathe. Because sometimes, it’s all overwhelming.
This quarantine has actually kind of been a bit of a blessing in disguise for me.
The past decade has been a grind, and a journey I wouldn’t take back. Ever. But I was tired. I was stuck in a routine that was numbing me and exhausting me. And I was sad and anxious all the time. Especially about how money driven and fast paced this world is. And considering the depression rates in this country, I don’t think I was alone.
It’s been a little over a month now and I have gained muscle, I sleep better, I eat healthier and I read so much. I paint, I listen to music and I take long walks and actually have time to enjoy each thing I do. I miss my friends, but I’m lucky I’m still employed and have my family and health.
I know a lot of people are hurting right now. Our social institutions weren’t prepared for a real emergency of this magnitude. Some of that was carelessness and ignorance and some of that was hubris.
There’s a lot more we will not see coming. And I know we don’t have all the solutions.
The virus is one concern. A depressed economy will linger much longer. And there will be famine around the world. And violence. More so than there already is. And what will we do with the downtrodden spirits of all of us grieving at once?
Paul Kalanithi, a young neurosurgeon who was diagnosed with cancer at the peak of his career wrote in his memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, “What patients seek is not scientific knowledge that doctors hide but existential authenticity each person must find on her own. Getting too deeply into statistics is like trying to quench a thirst with salty water. The angst of facing mortality has no remedy in probability.”
Science is a wonderful tool, but philosophy has it’s place too. It is the art of creating meaning of the facts. This is our remedy - creating meaning for ourselves.
Every atom in you and I was forged in starfire. We were built for intensity. We were built to last. We were built to be transformed, over and over and over again. And we were built to make our own light.
Yes the universe is a harsh place, but we are not new here.
The birds in my neighborhood are loving spring this year. They are always flying about singing, chasing each other, and I love laying out in the grass in my backyard, bare foot, with a book and my dog, and watching them fly around. As I looked up at the solitary blue of the sky instead of being stuck in my hour and half long noisy and pushy commute to work, I was able to really think about all that I had taken for granted before, all I was grateful for now and all that could be different. Because when something goes wrong, when something is broken, it’s a great opportunity to change it or fix it. Or at the very least, change ourselves to adapt to the new reality.
One thing that I kept thinking about was this year’s graduations. My sister and one of my best friends will be graduating from grad school this year and won’t get to actually attend their graduations. I will make sure they are celebrated in other ways with lots of cheesecake and chocolate gelato, but I know they are still processing a bittersweet feeling about the whole deal. My sister is a teacher and in addition to her own graduation, she was sad about not getting to say goodbye to her students like normal. No celebration, no ritual, no dressing up, no dancing, no teary hugs as she wished them luck as the seniors headed off into the world.
You only graduate high school once.
I know some people don’t care for tradition and ritual, but those are part of all human cultures past and present. I’m not saying rituals shouldn’t change as society does, (glad we don’t have virgin sacrifices to sea deities anymore) but we still need rituals. To celebrate, to grieve, to transition together, it’s not just human, it’s necessary.
And this class, the class of 2020, has been through so much already.
Not just personal trials and triumphs, but school shootings, mental health crises, social and political upheavals, wars, climate disasters.
And now they have to make their way into a more unsure world than before.
You deserved to celebrate reaching this milestone, together. To honor all the smiles, tears and sweat it took to make it here. You deserved a more prepared adultworld.
I really am sorry.
And though we can’t all watch all of you walk across that stage, we can definitely still join in your celebration.
In fact, I think if this were like any other year, your graduation would have come and gone, just as remarkable as any other. However, this year, because the whole world has been shaken out of a stupor, we are all the more conscious of the joy and pain of every passing moment. And we are more aware of how interconnected we all are.
As all of you make your way into the world, you’ll have to keep some things in mind.
Life will bring you to your knees over and over again.
And as you’ve probably already seen, adults don’t have things figured out. Not even a little bit.
I was pretty idealistic and optimistic when I graduated 10 years ago. Maybe even a little arrogant. I was the typical nerd who wanted to eat lunch in the library, hang out with the teachers after school and go to college so I could finally solve all the world’s problems. Cause of course I’d find the answers. I always found the answers. AP tests, SATs, college placement exams. I had to have the answers. I needed to be right. College was similar. I learned a lot and changed my perceptions with slow methodical exposure to new ideas. I traveled and explored, but in a controlled way. But even there, I was pretty good at getting answers. Taking tests was second nature. It was only after I graduated college and had to figure out what was next that it really hit me, not only did I not have the answers, I didn’t even know what the questions were. There was no pre-made structure any more, and no more guides.
It was liberating because now I would get to make my own meaning and terrifying because now I would have to make my own meaning.
I have suffered my fair share of disappointment and disillusionment since then. You will too. Life’s like that. It’s messy and it’s painful. It’s chaos.
But it’s also heartbreakingly, breathtakingly, beautiful.
For every cold night that sobs shook my bed, there were nights filled with a chorus of laughter and twinkling lights and campfires. For every stressful day that ended in rushing through traffic, there was a sunset with my feet pressed into warm sand.
I’m not going to get into the ins and outs of how I learned what I learned, that would be too long of a post, but I can say that from what I have experienced in the last 10 years, my optimism is not based on blind hope and unrealistic expectations, but on experience of seeing the human spirit in action. It’s limitations are many, but every now and then we expand that threshold.
We were not born to seek comfort alone. We come into the world naked, amidst blood, cries, and our mothers’ struggles. We come into this world horribly entangled yet separate and that’s how it always stays. Side by side yet light years apart with our own burdens to carry.
We are Sysiphus but we get stronger every time we make it up that hill with our boulders. The joy is in the doing. You just have to find your sense of purpose. If you have a purpose, you will get out of bed on the hardest of days, because you know why you do what you do. Find that first. (Your purpose is not necessarily your job.) It can be anything. Decide with your heart, find your why and your brain will find the how. And it’s okay to fail, to quit what you don’t care for anymore and try something new. Life is an experiment, do it differently and see what happens. No one makes it out alive anyway, so have fun. But also don’t be afraid to commit to something worthwhile, no matter the cost. (And there always is a cost.)
Then find your people. You take your friends for granted in high school. The adult world is a lonely place. You will have to put effort into those people you want to keep around. Be picky with who you choose to invest in. There’s nothing more lonely than a half-hearted friendship.
When you do find people who take the time to understand you and treat you well, the ones that keep coming back, don’t let them go and give them your all.
Stay curious, because a blue whale’s tongue weighs 8000 pounds, mantis shrimp can see colors that we can’t, caterpillars turn to complete goo in their cocoons before reforming as butterflies, birds are the closest relatives to dinosaurs, the blood vessels in your body could wrap around the Earth 4 times, the nearest solar system to ours is 4.37 light years away, and everything you see and hear is your brain processing light and sound waves. This world is absolutely delightfully bonkers. Remember that and you’ll never be bored.
Be brave. This one is harder than it sounds. Being brave isn’t being loud, opinionated, or charging into situations, no matter how good you think you are or how right. It’s getting comfortable with discomfort. It’s asking for help when you need it, it’s helping others when they need it. It’s being okay with being alone. It’s being okay with being together. It’s putting aside your pride to apologize when you’re wrong. It’s standing up for what you believe in. It’s saying no. It’s saying yes. It’s getting up every morning to face your demons. It’s accepting the fact that you don’t know what’s going to happen next. It’s accepting that much of life is dependent on luck and chance. It’s being willing to see things differently. It’s accepting the fact that fear doesn’t ever go away and that it’s not always a bad thing. It’s finding reasons to laugh anyway. It’s trusting that most things will work out with time.
Be kind. This means being patient. This is perhaps the hardest one. Loving people isn’t easy. Loving yourself isn’t easy. It may even hurt at first to be vulnerable. You will hate it some days. But attempting to understand someone, and letting them try and understand you, something that’s damn near impossible to get right, is the bravest thing I can think of. The dumbest thing I can think of. The most human thing I can think of.
The universe is a vast expanse of cold quiet nothing occasionally punctuated with the most blinding and brilliant everythings.
What gives me hope is that in a place so cold, we are somehow miraculously and wonderfully warm blooded. And whereas most of space is silent, here we sing, even in the most desperate of times. Mothers sing, fathers sing, lovers sing, gangsters sing, ballerinas sing, birds sing, whales sing, even the Germans sing. To sing is to transform your very breath into music. Into vibrations. Into waves. And it always comes down to waves in the end. Music comes in waves. Emotions come in waves. Change comes in waves.
And as Alan Watts once said, “You didn’t come into this world, you came out of it, like a wave out of the ocean. You are no stranger here.”
So don’t act like some transient guest at a cosmic AirBNB - this is your home. Take care of it, the plants, the animals, the oceans, rivers and lakes. Take care of yourself, and take care of each other. We are all we have. And we still have work to do and songs to sing. So find your work song, your fight song, your love song and harmonize with your neighbors, even if it’s from a few balconies away.
All the best,
Gia